Why Government Projects Don't Follow an Ideal PM Process

As is pretty obvious to all project management professionals--and people involved in the implementation of projects of any kind at home, in workplaces or any field of life requiring an approach to achieve a result by implementing an organized methodology--projects are composed of process groups. These groups are depicted as five primary pillars: initiating, planning, executing, monitoring/controlling, and closing, according PMI’s A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide)—Fifth Edition, which is also approved as an American National Standard by ANSI.

These process groups could be sequenced in a neat order throughout the enforcement of projects--and in a broader sense, of programs and portfolios. These crucial entities might be spread throughout sequential phases. A more agile approach could be practiced such as Scrum, particularly in software development projects--with several iterations consisting of each process group compressed within a period generally spanning up to one month.

Perhaps a handful of projects would meet an ideal path in exercising project phases. All of us are pretty familiar with the common failures that are frequently encountered. Anyone can grasp the fact that minor or major failures are often inevitable in project management, taking into account the numerous examples depicted from all kind of industries.